Translating Cuba

On April 20, CID activist Adrian Benitez Ramos was threatened with expulsion from his workplace in the municipality of San Juan y Martinez, in the province of Pinar del Rio. Benitez was summoned to the police station where he was interrogated and threatened by agents of the State “Insecurity.”
 
On being released on the afternoon of the same day, Benitez confirmed that they assured him that if he continued participating in opposition activities he would be expelled from his current job and imprisoned.

“I have been receiving these kinds of threats since I joined the CID. It is worrying because I am afraid of losing my job or being imprisoned just for my way of thinking.”

Benitez said his wife may also lose her job.

Adrian Benitez is a mechanic at a repair shop for electric kitchen pots, operated by the Trading Company of Domestic Appliances Parts and Accessories (ECEPAE), owned by the Ministry of Domestic Trade (MINCIN). He has worked one year with irreproachable conduct and stands out for his ability and skill, as acknowledged by the directors of the repair shop.

“If I lose this job it will cause many problems, I can not do anything else, all my life I’ve been just this,” said Benitez. He said that he does not receive a high high salary but at least it is a help for his family which depends entirely on him.

3 May 2013

A representation of the Ladies in White movement, Human Rights defenders and a group of activists from the Cuban Independent and Democratic Party (CID), said goodbye on Sunday afternoon, April 21, to the Ladies in White Laura María Labrada Pollán and Belkis Castillo at Jose Marti Airport in Havana.

About 30 people attended the farewell of the compatriots who traveled to Belgium to participate in the ceremony for the Sakharov Prize awarded to the Ladies in White in 2005 by the European Parliament.

Before boarding the plane both women made statements to the foreign press about the reason for their trip, as well as the various demands they would make to get the attention of the international community for the human rights violations committed by the Cuban government. Among those present at this farewell was the former political prisoner Angel Moya husband of current leader and founder Berta Soler, who is also abroad.

Laura María said that she would soon be back in Cuba to continue the fight with the Ladies in White movement in the streets of the capital and with all the women over the island; she would travel only a few days to participate in the acceptance of this award which represented one of her mother’s greatest desires that the work and courage of so many women confronting tyranny would be recognized.

CID, Lisbán Hernández Sánchez

22 April 13

 What Else the Commission Didn’t See of Cuban Injustice

The sun rising over Prison 1580 was a violent awakening of the “re-educators” offensive because the inmates cannot stay in their beds and not watch TV to see “the march of the valiant people.”

They entered the barracks shouting insults and dirty words, threatening that they would take the names of those who were not in front of the television and later they would be disciplined.

For committing that “indiscipline” the entire barracks was denied a visit and the conjugal pavilion. In the end most of the prisoners were punished and remained staring the economic waste suffered by the country; and they came to the conclusion that after being awakened, offended and punished, the “re-educators” went to their office where there wasn’t a television. They could hear their voices and their laughter, surely mocking their slaves.

And I say slaves because that same May 1st Cuba declared to the Human Rights Commission in Geneva and the TV news relayed the speech of Chancellor Bruno Rodríguez’s speech and the prisoner enjoyed his humorous lies. Most of them laughed as if they were being tickled.

When he said that Cuban prisoners were paid a salary equal what is paid in civilian life, they laughed and cursed him; the majority of prisoners do not earn a salary, and the few who earn something, after working a month, including every Saturday and some Sundays more than 8 hours a day and with the worse food, on payday receive 103 pesos, that is some 4 CUC, which isn’t enough to buy two jars of oil or five lousy soaps.

In the same speech the Chancellor swore that there is no drug trafficking in Cuba. And in my barracks more than half the population, around forty, are drug users and there are exactly seventeen convicted to drug trafficking.

Hopefully the Commission will investigate in-depth all the constant lies of the Cuban government. They have been hiding these truths for many years that are so painful, especially for their suffering victims who have nothing to do, from the inside of hell, with how these officials lie to international public opinion, as in this case to the United Nations.

When the Chancellor assured that in Cuba there is no torture, the prisoners — as if he could see them — stood in front of the TV and showed their scars, their missing teeth, the lost vision in their eyes from beatings, fractured nasal septums and arms and broken fingers… and all the signs of humiliation and abuse printed on their bodies, all of which suffered under a legal neglect.

When a prisoner is abused and there are injuries, they hide them in the punishment cells so that the rest of the prison doesn’t see it, and they stay there until the swelling and bruising disappear.

Then the prisoner always receives the same threat: if he informs the international press or tells his family what happened, he will be sent to distance province far from home, so then his family will have to travel several days and spend a lot of money to visit him.

This is the life of a Cuban prisoner and nothing distinguishes it from that the official propaganda says happens on Guantanamo Base with all the abuses committed there, because I repeat, in my case as in so many we are forced to swallow disgusting food when we decide to start a hunger strike.

I myself, realized in the end that I had to get out of the punishment cell in which they’d confined me so that I could fulfill my condition as a blogger, because in that silence and non-communication I was doing them a favor.

Since they took me out of that cell I have not swallowed the disgusting food that they distribute to the prisoners. I survive on crackers, sugar and milk provided by my family, and above all, on my ideas of freedom and my work as a blogger and writer.

With this I possess more than the dictatorship.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Prison 1580. San Miguel del Padrón. May 2013

4 May 2013

Nemesia Rodriguez is the most famous person from the Zapata Swamp. She lives in Soplillar, which is nothing more than houses around a ball field near Playa Larga, in a simple masonry house with iron railings at the door and a comfortable sofa — a gift from by Fidel Castro — in the living room. Friendly, talkative, open, humble in her manner and her environment, she welcomed this stranger who interrupted the sewing work, with no reproach for the unexpected visit.

I confess that I sat in her uncomfortable little living room: three huge portraits of Fidel Castro, at my back and side, one of Raul and another of Celia Sanchez watched me all the time, smiling and victorious from the simple innocent victim they knew how to bring to their trench. The portrait of the mother dead in the April bombing — an amplification given by Kcho — lies amidst the Cuban presidents. When I arrived, Nemesia had in front of her, covered with her sewing work that she put aside to talk with me, a Bible.

I listened with respect. I was not there to provoke mournful memories, or discuss about the two opposing Cubas that we defend, but to know her closely. I felt it was my pain for her lost mother. I remained silent before all her words of affection and gratitude to people who, for me, the deserve the most resounding oblivion, but to her they brought some interested compassion and support.

I understand because I too have seen my mother in distress and crying every time the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) interrogates her for the crime of being my mother, and the murky emotions against those individuals and bosses are inevitable. The pain of Nemesia is of being an orphan, endless pain that no one wants to come to, it is dignified that we remain silent before it; her appreciation of those who see as protectors those who definitely damage them, and then don’t want to know, nor can they repair the damage, it’s understandable and human.

But there is forgiveness, that few attempt to cultivate in this country — and never those who should ask for it — and reconciliation among Cubans who have amassed mountains of errors, as high as the Sierra Maestra.

They encourage all of the grudges of the past and only speak of unity for the trenches and the power, not of forgiveness and coexistence, they composed this poisoned elegy of politicking and manipulation, and have made millions of children repeat, they provoke a victim to pubicly repeat their bleak history, and swell all the sadness of the victim in this last trip of 2011 in Santiago de Cuba, and they could not prevent their ending up in intensive care in Saturnino Lora hospital because the heart failed so much revived emotion, “They don’t speak any more in the suffering of the past because they kill you, not the planes,” the doctors told the MININT officials, Nemesia’s guides, those, those who enjoy cultivating bad memories in a country that needs reconciliation and to speak of the present, who are the real culprits of every open sore still on Cuban consciences.

And that, apparently, they lack.

22 April 2013

It has nineteen barracks crammed with hungry and disappointed men who lately have been mocking the image of Cuban prisons the Government wants to show.

Here, in Prison 1580, they won’t bring them, says one, and everyone else laughs.

The prisoners in Cuba, in particular in Prison 1580, work the whole month, including Saturdays and under the sweltering sun, in heavy construction work to collect 103 Cuban pesos.

They return to the barracks frustrated. Helpless, they hide their tears behind vulgar expressions, offending the prison system and Government leaders, and so they vent their discomfort.

Add that of the 90 grams of rice due them they only get 40, and of the two boiled eggs most of the time they get only one, with the rest of their food consisting of a colorless, odorless, very bad tasting soup.

Added to that there are the beatings, the constant dungeons, the sentences that are extended, and the blackmail so that they won’t demand their “rights.”

The combination of all this is unbearable: the exploitation of man by man. But it will all be hidden from the national and international journalists Commission…

The Castros have always mocked the Commissions that visit prisons. They prepared a walk-through for a couple of prisons painted and decorated for the occasion, with prisoners warned not to say a word and that later compromises them and for those they refuse time off for good behavior.

Everything is a perfect representation of the scene of a play staged for the Commission to get a good impression. In other words, a constant mockery of human rights and those who protect them.

The prisoners only yearn for their freedom, understandably, and so they join forces in silence enduring everything to get out as soon as possible.

But many can not suppress their desire to protest and they approach me to denounce the continuing violations of which they are the objects and the injustices they suffered in their trials.

They place their hopes in me even though I assure them that I can not do much because their statements will only be read abroad. But they insist that they want the world to be aware of what is happening in Cuban jails.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Prison 1580. April 2013

3 May 2013

In the 1950s one of the principal objectives of the fight against the dictatorship was the full restoration of the constitution of 1940, some of whose articles had never been fulfilled. Once the new regime was in power, however, it ignored this constitution and the country began to ruled according to the so-called Fundamental Law, which legalized a priori any action carried out by authorities based on the principle that “the revolution was the source of power.”

It was not until 1976 that a new constitution was drafted, one with a new socialist character, modeled largely on the USSR’s Stalinist-era constitution, which by then had already itself been revised. It was drafted by a commission created expressly for this purpose rather than by a constituent assembly, which would have included representatives from the country’s entire political spectrum. Upon completion it was submitted to a national referendum (whose participation was more formal than real) and was approved by referendum with few significant changes, the way things always get approved in Cuba.

This constitution — amended and ratified in 1992 and 2002 — is the one now in force, although it remains unfamiliar to the majority of the population and even to the authorities, who take it out only to highlight a few of its articles when they find it politically convenient, ignoring some and violating others. For most citizens the constitution is really just one more document without any practical application for solving their day-to-day problems and, therefore, useless.

In addition to other absurdities, archaic articles and inconsistencies, this constitution decrees one-party rule, the exclusivity of state organizations as the only legal avenues for expression, and the irrevocability of socialism. It also enshrines the idea that none of the freedoms for citizens recognized in its text can be exercised to oppose anything stipulated in the document or in its laws, or in opposition to the existence or aims of the socialist state, or against the decision of the Cuban people to build socialism and communism. Once again everything is ideologically generalized, ignoring the fact that the so-called “Cuban people” are not made up only of sympathizers of the regime, but also of many thousands who are not, and who have and hold, as Cubans with equal rights, other political, economic and social viewpoints.

If we hope to have dialogue and peaceful means of resolving our problems, it is necessary to have constitutional and political reform which permits the decriminalization of the opposition and expansion of civil liberties. This must not be seen as something contrary to economic reform or as an objective to be achieved after such reform. It is rather something that cannot be postponed, a necessity brought about by the appearance of new constituencies that are not being legitimately represented by current state institutions.

4 May 2013

Tomorrow, May 1, the United Nations Human Rights Council will meet in Geneva, where Cuba will present a report with notes on its prison policy.

“Dressing up” for the occasion, for the first time in nine years the Castro regime opened its jails to the national and international press accredited in Cuba. It is public knowledge that the infamous stance adopted by these visitors facing the reality of the Cuban prison system.

In a previous statement we urged journalists to reconsider and not continue to be complicit in the crimes committed in the Castro concentration camps. But silence prevailed as expected.

Those who were not silent were the prisoners who by different means told the world the cruel reality that the dictatorship makes happen. All their complaints are on the Internet. Here we provide a link where you can listen to two testimonies of the many who have appeared just in the last few days.

Angel Santiesteban-Prats wrote an open letter to the Human Rights Council which urges them to know and appreciate the real testimonies of those who suffer violations of their most basic rights, countless humiliations and deprivation in these prisons. The letter has been widely reported by the international media and numerous blogs over several days.

On the strength of his claim, we publish the letter again, this time in English, as submitted to the Council.

We believe it is most opportune to recall the list of political prisoners who populate the concentration camps and who both the Castro regime, and its allies in the world, refuse to admit the existence of.

We hope that neither Angel Santiesteban’s Letter nor the list of political prisoners are ignored tomorrow at the meeting of the Council, and that its members show the world that they are fulfilling their mission to ensure the defense of Human Rights without distinction.

For all Cuban prisoners we ask for justice and respect for their rights. And for the political prisoners in particular, justice, respect for their rights and freedom.

Finally we urge everyone to work together tirelessly disseminating the list of political prisoners — sadly always provisional — so that their names are not forgotten and the world’s eyes are finally opened to the terrible reality that Cubans have been suffering for 54 years.

Thank you for your attention,

The Editorial Team

Open Letter to the United Nations Human Rights Council

Honourable Sirs,

I turn to you from the deep despair produced by my imprisonment for reasons of consciousness in one of the Castro brothers’ horrific prisons. In your hand is the opportunity to stop the agony for so many inmates who survive the cruelest famines and tortures, both physical and psychological.

In order to hide the truth, on April 9, just before the international journalists arrived, I was transferred by the back door from the prison La Lima, where I was confined, to another prison, the 1580, wherein all sorts of outrages and humiliations, worthy of Nazi concentration camps, are committed against the inmates.  Inmates are crammed in small spaces; there is a lack of food and  proper sanitation, the violence is constant, the most basic rights of the prisoners and their families are violated.  These sad conditions add up to make this prison a true concentration camp.

In recent months there have been two large fires in the prison, the causes of which have yet to be explained. Multiple suicides also accompany daily life in this prison.

Upon my arrival I started a hunger strike; I was put in solitary confinement with no light, no water, no clothes or toiletries. After several days I was violated by several guards, some of them held me by my limbs while another pressed my nostrils until I opened my mouth to breathe and a stinking soup was introduced into, which choked me; and thus again and again I was force fed this soup until I was on the floor of the cell completely covered in food, which I vomited uncontrollably.

I want to denounce Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Quintana, head of the Provincial Penitentiary Administration of Havana who is directly responsible for what I have told above.

I also want to clarify that my situation is not the worst. I wish that you could listen directly to the abused inmates in order they could explain for themselves the hell in which they live. I fear not being credible enough to expose the horror and the wickedness we suffer daily.

The Cuban government must understand once and for all that it is impossible to maintain their power at the expense of people’s pain.

We, who are suffering these terrible circumstances, strongly urge you to value this first-hand testimony, which I give under full oath; asking God to put His holy hands on this country forgotten by the international community, and that the testimonies of the prisoners such as myself can be heard. We ask that Cuba signs the UN covenants and accepts the statements of Human Rights declarations, and if it does not do so, that appropriate measures should be taken to expel the existing Cuban government from the concert of free nations.

We are a devastated country that, despite these fifty-four years of slavery, still dreams of becoming a prosperous and free nation. We need help and support, we need that this horror, the one my fellow inmates and I have and continue to suffer, be halted.

I beg you to accept my gratitude in advance.

Yours faithfully,

Angel Santiesteban
Prisión 1580.

Partial list of those sanctioned and processed for political reasons drawn up on the basis of what the Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation published this year, more cases have been added since then. There may be more cases we do not know:

1- Abreu Bonora, M.arcelino
2- Alcalá Aramboru, Harold
3- Alonso Hernández, Claro Fernando
4- Alonso Parada, Lázaro
5- Álvarez Pedrozo, Pedro de la Caridad
6- Álvarez Puig, Yordanis
7- Arce Romero, Lewis
8- Arcia Céspedes, Pavel
9- Arzuaga Peña, Ariel Eugenio
10- Ávila Sierra, Lázaro
11- Borges Pérez, Ernesto
12- Brachaw Alexander, Dolyn
13- Bravo López, Joel
14- Cano Díaz Joel
15- Caraballo Betancourt, Madeline Lázara
16- Castillo González, Reinaldo
17- Cervantes García Jorge
18- Cerezo Sirut Leandro
19-Cobas Sendó, Roelvis
20- Cornel de la Rosa, Raúl Manuel
21- Corrales Jiménez, Nayibis de la Caridad
22- De Miranda Rubo, Karel
23- Delgado Aramburo, Maikel
24- Díaz Bouzá, Miguel
25- Díaz Ortíz, José Ángel
26- Farret Delgado, Yander
27- Frenández Benitez, Luis Enrique
28- Figuerola Miranda, Enrique
29- Forbes Lamorú, Alain
30- Frometa Allen, Eider
31- Frometa Lobaina, Ángel
32- Garro Alfonso, Sonia
33- González Castillo, Eliso
34- González Estrada, Alexander
35- González Moreno, Ulises
36- González Pozo, Eldris
37- Gross, Allan Philip
38- Guía Piloto, Yosiel
39- Henry Grillo, Ramón
40- Hermán Aguilera, José David
41- Hernández Ruiz Ricardo
42- Labrador Díaz, Luis Enrique
43- Ledea Pérez, Wilmer
44- Lescay Veloz, Rider
45- Lima Cruz, marcos Maikel
46- López de Moya, Danny
47- Lozada Igarza, Luis Enrique
48- Martín Calderín, Carlos Rafael
49- Martín Calderín, Miraida
50- Matos Montes de Oca, Rafael
51- Muñoz González, Ramón Alejandro
52- Mustelier Galán, Bismark
53- Naranjo Bonne, Omar
54- Núñez Pascual, Adriana
55- Osoria Claro, Francisco
56- Padrón Quintero, Santiago
57- Parada Ramírez, Raúl
58- Peña Ramírez Jesús Manuel
59- Pérez Bocourt, Elias
60- Pérez Pérez, Danny
61- Pérez Puentes, Jorge Luis
62- Piloto Barceló, David
63- Planas Robert, Emilio
64- Pradera Váldez, Máximo
65- Puig Rodríguez, Yelkis
66- Quvedo Valladares, Eliosbel
67- Real Suárez, Humberto Eladio
68- Reyes Rodríguez, Francisco
69- Ribeau Noa, Arcelio
70- Rivera Guerra, Niorvis
71- Riveri Gascón, Ernesto Roberto
72- Rodríguez Acosta, Osvaldo
73- Rodrígez Castillo, Osvaldo
74- Rodríguez Jiménez, Boris
75- Romero Hurtado, Lázaro
76- Salmerón Mendoza, Erick
77- Sánchez Pérez, César Andrés
78- Santiesteban Prats, Ángel Lázaro
79- Santovenia Fernández, Daniel Candelario
80- Sarraf Trujillo, Rolando
81- Sosa Fortuny, Armando
82- Surís de la Torre, Ihosvani
83- Tavío López, Rogelio
84- Terrero Carrión, Grerardo
85- Thomas González, Yoanny
86- Torres, Luis Antonio
87- Torres Mártínez, Yoan
88- Tudela Iríbar, Rolando
89- Triana González, Orlando
90- Vargas Martín, Alexei
91- Vargas Martín, Diango
92- Vargas Martín, Vianco
93- Vázquez Osorio, Juan Carlos

Political prisoners who continue to serve their sentences on parole:

1- Argüelles Morán, Pedro
2- Biscet González, Oscar Elías
3- Díaz Fleitas, Eduardo
4- Espinosa Chepe, Oscar Manuel
5- Ferrer García, José Daniel
6- Gónzalez Marrero, Disodado
7- Hérnandez Carrillo, Iván
8- Linares García, Librado
9- López Pérez, Abel
10- Maseda Gutiérrrez, Héctor
11- Moya Acosta, Ángel Juan
12- Navarro Rodríguez, Felix
13- Olivera Castillo, Jorge
14- Palacios Ruiz Héctor
15- Ramos Lauzurique Arnaldo
16- Roque Caballero, Martha Beatriz

30 April 2013

I saw the news on a TeleSUR headline: “Evo Morales will run for re-election [in Bolivia] in 2014.” My thinking arises from my experience as a Cuban victim of totalitarianism and is: Does anyone doubt he will win?

4 May 2013

In Cuba, May is a month that evokes history and celebration for the advent of the  Republic on May 20, 1902, the celebration of International Workers Day, which had become of spectacle of the “chorus syndrome” for half a century. In Spain, May Day is a National Holiday for Labor Day, and the following day in Madrid marks the 1808 popular uprising against the French forces, whose troops had already been kidnapped by Carlos IV and his dynastic successor (Fernando), repressing the Aranjuez Mutiny and implementing terror in other places on the Peninsula, to impost Joseph Bonaparte, brother of the French emperor, on the throne.

The uprising in Madrid and the wave of executions was the prelude to the War of Independence against foreign troops; its huge internal and external consequences for the dramatic situation of Spain was taken advantage of by its colonies in America to throw off the colonial yoke.

Historians, artists and writers have testified about the odyssey of the Spanish people against their occupiers. The brilliant artist Francisco Goya memorialized on two canvases the shootings of May 2 and 3 in Madrid, while the writer Benito Pérez Galdós wrote novels about the events, and the sculptors such as Antonio Sala, author of the Daoíz and Velarde Monument, located in May 2 Square, and Aniceto Marinas, creator of the Monument to the Heroes of May 2, around which the first centenary was celebrated in (1908) in the Puerta del Sol.

3 May 2013

While we wait with growing worry for news of Angel, we share here this tribute dedicated to him by his close friend Camilo Venegas El Fogonero.

When Fatties Go on Hunger Strike

In Clandestinos, one of the Cuban films I most enjoy, there is a moment that I really like. It’s near the beginning. Dozens of young revolutionaries who remain prisoners in a jail in a dictatorship, decide to declare a hunger strike.

One of them, who is fat — they call him El Gordo — and who was played by Amado del Pino, is taking a shower when a decision is made. With his head still soapy, he looks at the camera and raises his index finger, “Hey, no, no hunger strike, better suicide,” he says.

Then, when those who were selected for the strike are transferred with their mats to another cell block, the fat guy tries to sneak. The group leader (Luis Alberto Garcia) persuades him and he says he can not resist: “Look, I have this support this,” answers el Gordo, and hefts his enormous paunch, “I have more than you.”

A cut puts the viewer in the dark night of the galley. All are in bed and hungry. El Gordo is joking with his companions and about to pronounce one of the most delicious speeches of Cuban film history:

“Pino, Pinito, what you doing now, bro, if the old guy shows up out there with a little plate or two…what’s more, with a bucket of soup?” he says, savoring it.

“A little soup with cheese, delicious. Mommy, throw me a bucket of soup, enough to go around. Enough to get our mouths dirty. You’re not messy when you eat? Ah, whoever doesn’t get messy isn’t enjoying it.”

“Gordo, for Pete’s sake, shut up,” his companion says.

“It’s so delicious to get messy, buddy!”

“Keep it up, Gordo.”

“Me, since I was a kid, I get the food all over my face. Me, I’m an eater, and if I’m an eater I’m going to keep on eating.”

“Gordo, fucking can it. Stop, dammit!”

“Well fuck me,” he insists. “Here, at first I dreamed of women, but now I dream of tamales…!”

First, they throw a show. Later, the leader of the group goes and threatens to kill him if he keeps talking about food.

Invisible Threads

Through the same invisible threads that helped Antonio Gramsci to get his writings out of prison, this message came to me from a punishment cell in Havana, Cuba.

“To El Fogonero Camilo Venegas
“Love is not surrendured as long as I breathe. The pain and the injustice multiply. And I wake up happy.”

Ángel Santiesteban

Published in El Fogonero

23 April 2013

My friend Ana experienced Chavez’s death like that of a family member — tearfully and without music. Whe nshe speaks of him, her voice breaks. She does not know how to explain the reason for such devotion, but she relied on the Venezuelan broadcaster Telesur for all the details. Since the subject was very emotional for her, it was not until two days ago that I asked what she thought about the recent Venezuelan elections. Her response came as a surprise.

“I would not have voted for either of them. Capriles is from the extreme right, but I don’t know what Chavez saw in Maduro. Someone must have suggested that he read his speeches because he knows how to talk. What he does not know how to do is shut up.”

I heard something similar, though less concise and forthright, from my neighbor Tomás, who said to a visitor with sadness, “Maduro works hard, but he does not have Chavez’s charisma.”

An observation by my mother, who at ninety-six is as lucid as ever, reiterates one often heard during the Venezuelan presidential campaign. “The worst thing he could do is to try to imitate [Chavez],” she noted.

I have also heard cynical comments from people who peevishly detest Maduro, but who detest even more the power outages from which we Cubans have been spared, at least for the next three years.

3 May 2013